# Catastrophe

Catastrophe or catastrophic comes from the Greek κατά (kata) = down; στροφή (strophē) = turning (Greek: καταστροφή). It may refer to the following:

## A general or specific event

* Disaster, a devastating event
* The Asia Minor Catastrophe, a Greek name for the 1923 Greek defeat at the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922) and the population exchange between Greece and Turkey after the defeat
* The Holocaust, also known by the Hebrew name HaShoah which translates to "The Catastrophe"
* The Chernobyl Catastrophe, a name of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster
* Blue sky catastrophe, a type of bifurcation of a periodic orbit, where the orbit vanishes into the blue sky
* Catastrophic failure, complete failure of a system from which recovery is impossible (e.g. a bridge collapses)
* Climatic catastrophe, forced transition of climate system to a new climate state at a rate which is more rapid than the rate of change of the external forcing
* Ecological catastrophe, a disaster to the natural environment due to human activity
* Error catastrophe, extinction of an organism as a result of excessive mutations
* The Ikiza, which translates to the catastrophe from Kirundi
* Impending climatic catastrophe, conjectured runaway climate change resulting from a rise in the average temperature of the Earth's climate system
* Infrared catastrophe or infrared divergence is a situation in particle physics in which a particular integral diverges
* Iron catastrophe, runaway melting of early Earth's interior as a result of potential energy release from sinking iron and nickel melted by heat of radioactive decay
* Late Bronze Age collapse
* Malthusian catastrophe, prediction of a forced return to subsistence-level conditions once population growth has outpaced agricultural production
* Mitotic catastrophe, an event in which a cell is destroyed during mitosis
* The Nakba in Arabic.
* Nedelin catastrophe or Nedelin disaster, launch pad accident at Baikonur test range of Baikonur Cosmodrome
* Oxygen catastrophe, the biologically induced appearance of dioxygen (O2) in Earth's atmosphere
* Runaway climate change or Climatic catastrophe, hypothesized runaway global warming when a tipping point is exceeded
* Toba catastrophe hypothesis, hypothesis that the Toba supervolcanic eruption caused a global volcanic winter and 1,000-year-long cooling episode
* Ultraviolet catastrophe, the prediction by classical physics that a black body will emit radiation at infinite power
* Vacuum catastrophe, the discrepancy between theoretical and measured vacuum energy density in cosmology

## Art, entertainment, and media
### Fictional entities

* Catastrophe, the main antagonist in The Secret Files of the Spy Dogs

### Film

* Catastrophe (film), a 1977 American documentary film
* The Catastrophe (film), a 2011 American short film

### Literature

* Catastrophe (book), a 2009 non-fiction book by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann
* Catastrophe (drama), the climax and resolution of a plot in ancient Greek drama and poetry
* Catastrophe (play), a 1982 short play by Samuel Beckett
* Catastrophe: Risk and Response, a 2004 non-fiction book by Richard Posner

### Music

* Catastrophic (band), a band featuring Trevor Peres

### Television

* Catastrophe (2008 TV series), a five-part science series on Channel 4, presented by Tony Robinson
* Catastrophe (2015 TV series), a 2015 sitcom starring Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney

## Mathematics

* Catastrophe theory, a theory by the French mathematician René Thom and the object of its study